The President's Bodyguard | Title Sequence | Animation
Narrated by Amitabh Bachchan, this title sequence explores the history of the President's Bodyguard, India's last horse mounted soldiers.
Client: National Geographic/ Star India
Production: Robin Roy Films
Director: Robin Roy
Animation: Hyper Visual Experience Studio
CGI Director: Nipun Sharma
Look Development and Animation: Kaustubh Mishra, Kartik Dutta
Modelling: Archesh Pandey
Narration: Amitabh Bachchan
Audio: Ishaan Chabbra
CASE STUDY
Hyper Visual Experience Studio was commissioned to create a title sequence, along with other show packaging for the President’s Bodyguard, a documentary about the Indian President’s armed protection unit.
Our brief was to create a historically accurate sequence to bring to life the history and establishment of the President's Bodyguard.
The President’s bodyguard was established nearly 250 years ago by then Viceroy of India, Warren Hastings, as a group of highly trained soldiers, master horsemen, tasked with protecting the Governor General. With Independence, they become the bodyguards to the President of India.
We had to capture this timeline in an aesthetic manner. This great drama had to be captured in in all its glory. Our idea was to set up an iconic stage, rotating on the wheels of time witnessing key moments in the history of this battalion, all frozen in action.
Our treatment primarily centred on idolizing these moments in the form of bronze statues, much like other iconic monuments. Our pre production involved heavy research about all aspects of the scenes, from what they wore in those times to the guns they used.
Mr. Amitabh Bachchan, a renowned actor from the Indian film industry, narrated the entire documentary experience. His deep baritone, and iconic voice become the perfect instrument to sing the story of the President’s Bodyguards, a story of a rich history, a glorious past, and their continuing traditions that carry on to this day.
We were able to deliver the sequence in 40 days, broken down as 12 days for pre-production, 20 days for production, and the last few days to polish up the final product. We used the power of GPU rendering (a new faster method of rendering images using the computer graphics card instead of the Central Processing Unit) to speed up our deliverable times, and were able to easily handle the large volume of rendering required by using cloud rendering services, scaling up easily as our demands for computing power increased.
The movie was inaugurated on the 14th of August, the eve of India’s Independence day, by the President of India, Mr Ram Nath Kovind at the Presidential Theater at the President’s official residence, the Rashtrapati Bhavan. It aired nationally the following night, on Independence day, the 15th of August, at 9 PM, simultaneously on National Geographic Channel India, as well as on Doordarshan, India’s state owned free to access national TV Channel.